i would like to see european activists start saying things like "we are standing today on the unceded ground of the eburones", or "we stop for a moment to recall the icenian massacre that occurred in this space".

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279961274_Fire_and_Sword_The_archaeology_of_Caesar's_Gallic_War

yeah.

i'm going to plan to take the weekend aside to recover. i could change my mind, but i don't want to go anywhere until the bruise is gone.

it's my fault, entirely. it was a brief event, but i was sitting awkwardly and it was really a good bash. also, my shoulder is raw enough that my hair is sticking to the flesh, like burnt meat

so, i'm going to plan around getting through the next journal update, and once i get back into it i could very well get lost in it.

i was talking about pivoting back to doing some work. this is coincidental, but in a sense it may be a blessing in disguise.

it's just a funny coincidence, i guess, that this happens right after sanders launches a review of labour standards at amazon.

i think it's a mistake, both in a political sense and in a functional sense, to focus on one employer. amazon is not a bad apple, it merely plays by the rules to it's self-interest, as they are set. so, you need systemic change, not this idea of vilifying this specific company.

but, let's remember what the actual story is.

and, let us remind ourselves of the power of regulatory capture.

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/454783-labor-charge-alleges-sanders-campaign-management-retaliated-against-union

why does the pride committee have the authority to make this decision? if you told me i couldn't march, you can be sure that i would. wow.

that being said, these parties are there to pander, and there's a good argument that the pandering is co-opting the festival.

i would like to see more municipalities take the view that politicians are only welcome at pride if they come as private citizens, and leave the politics at home for the day.

https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/ndp-meeting-with-calgary-pride-in-hopes-of-reversing-decision-to-ban-political-parties-from-the-parade

so, what happened last night?

i made it to ferndale a few minutes after 22:00, thinking the headliner would be on between 22:00 and 23:00. i know it was a wednesday, but i've still never seen a headlining band come on at 21:00, anywhere, ever.

they were done by 22:00; people were walking out as i was walking in.

so, what do you do after you bike an hour to get to a show and find out you missed it because it's absurdly early? i guess you either go home or you find something else to do, and i didn't want to go right home, so i went to hamtramck to catch the tail end of the show there. it's less surprising that they were finishing up when i got there around 23:00. 

i decided to catch a quick beer at a local techno spot and head home. that turned into a big beer, and eventually into being offered a taste of marijuana as a gift. i didn't finish that big beer until around 00:30, and realized quickly i was hanging out for the night.

so, i got another beer and went to the washroom, and quickly noticed that my thumb was bleeding. there is no cut on the thumb; rather, the blood was spurting out of my finger nail, like a blood vessel burst. somewhat baffled, i grabbed a little piece of toilet paper and went back outside to apply pressure to stop the bleeding. i don't know why my thumb was bleeding, but it seemed to be bleeding from the inside rather than the outside.

after sitting for a few moments, i started getting a little bit light-headed from the pot, which is fairly normal for me. i know that the way to deal with this is to sit still for a few minutes and let it pass; i know i'll be fine, soon. why does this happen to me? do i have a marijuana allergy? is it just low tolerance? is it dose dependent, and a consequence of relying on gifts (is the issue not having control over dosage)? i think i should start to get a better understanding of this.

so, i was sitting still, waiting for the intense part of the high to pass, when i fainted, and fell to a concrete floor, where i landed hard on my right side. i have substantive bruising on both my arm and my head.

i am certain that i fainted and fell, that this is what actually happened and not a gloss over some other event. i remember falling, and losing consciousness before i hit the floor; i then remember quickly regaining consciousness and jumping right back up again. so, i seem to have lost a small amount of time between the point that i fainted and the point that i got up.

i do not remember seizing; i'm told i was experiencing one.

let's recall. i took a pass on a j, then my thumb is randomly bleeding and i'm feeling light-headed so i sit down. i then faint, and fall over; i either went into a seizure as a consequence of hitting my head, or a i fainted for the purposes of having a seizure. i know i lost consciousness before i actually fell over.

i felt great immediately before this. in fact, i had just finished bicycling upwards of 15 miles, so i was feeling a pretty strong post-exercise natural high. i was not experiencing headaches, i wasn't tired, i wasn't sick.

the trigger was clearly the pot, and i'm left to wonder if the bleeding thumb isn't evidence that i accidentally inhaled some kind of upper, but i'm increasingly wondering if there's an underlying condition that i need to take seriously.

i was refused further service at that point, and while i had only had two beers and do not believe that the beer was a cause of the fainting or the seizure, i can hardly blame the bartender. so, i got another beer at a different bar down the street, then found myself talking with some people in the park until 5:00.

i stopped at the emergency room for observation on the way home, and just talked briefly to a nurse about the possibilities of a concussion. i was not having difficulty recalling information. my head did not hurt. i was not vomiting. my pupils were fine. so, i went home without seeing the doctor. i just needed somebody to tell me i'm ok....

not the best night, even if it worked out ok in the end.

and, how do i feel?

well, i got some rest. i'm a little tired from 20 miles of biking yesterday, and experiencing a bit of a pot hangover. i'm not vomiting. no headaches. no seizures, yet.

this is not the first neurological event i've experienced, and what i've tied previous events to is the combination of smoking (anything) on an empty stomach. these events are rare, and it's been years now since the last one, but it's not completely out of nowhere. this is the first time i've experienced any kind of injury from it, and i think it's partly because it's been so long that i forgot about it. in the past, i may have sat myself closer to the floor when i felt it coming on, rather then bend over on a bench. a part of the reason i fell over is due to the awkward way i was sitting.

so, i can't explain exactly what happened, but i can point out that it was triggered by the pot, may have had something to do with a lack of recent eating or lack of sleep, has happened before and doesn't appear to have long lasting effects. i just hope the bump on my head clears up soon; otherwise, i may be in for the weekend for that reason.

the event was at 1:00 am on thursday morning. i had last eaten around 7:00 am on wednesday morning. while i didn't feel particularly hungry, i think the direct takeaway is to ensure that i have something - even a piece of bread - in my stomach before i go out partying. and, in fact, i'm usually pretty good about this; i wasn't expecting to end up in a bar overnight last night, i was expecting to hit the show and catch the last bus home. i don't know the mechanism, but i've at least determined the correlation. i was a little sloppy, and need to be more conscious about it.

i've actually made this point over and over again: the idea that the culture of northern europe (the culture of the germanic, celtic, baltic and slavic nations, as well as the historically iranian cultures of europe (alans, scythians, sarmatians, etc)) is fundamentally christian, or erected on a christian edifice, is a colonial lie presented by the christian church. it's complete bullshit.

that is a claim that has more merit when applied to the southern parts of europe, and actually even has more merit when applied to the middle east and northern africa. egyptian culture is more fundamentally christian in origin than swedish or english culture is or ever will be.

the historical truth is that this area was brutally invaded and colonized first by romans and second by christians, who attempted to eradicate the indigenous culture and people and replace it with their own. what the romans did to the celts would qualify as outright genocide by modern standards. but, the barbarian north then spent centuries, and in some cases millennia, fighting back against these roman and christian invaders.

when these germanic tribes moved south to destroy rome, they were in a very large part moving to destroy christianity, and this is as true of the goths as it was of the last viking raids into france and england. they always targeted the churches, above all else; they would plunder and rape, yes, but burning down the church and the monasteries was always the central prerogative of the raids. and, there's a serious body of evidence that interprets this as self-defense, from a reaction to the romans slaughtering celts from britain to switzerland to an allied, pan-germanic response to charlemagne's attempt to eliminate the saxons.

beyond that, this idea of there being a western empire in the first place is questionable. the romans did not build the east, they inherited it; it was built mostly by the persians, and then renovated by the greeks. the romans literally even bought large swaths of it. so, with the exception of the pesky jews, it was less prone to nationalist uprisings, because they all saw themselves as a part of the same culture. when the east did revolt, it revolted together. in the west, there were constant revolts from the time of caesar. at almost no time in history was there actually centralized roman control over hispania, gaul, britannia and germania all at the same time. there were, rather, constant uprisings of celtic tribes, german tribes, various confederations of tribes, roman pretenders and anybody else that could take control of an army long enough to cause a ruckus. in that sense, the very western roman empire itself - the supposed basis of western "civilization" - is largely a mythological construct. the peoples of northwestern europe saw the romans not as bringers of civilization, but as cruel overlords, oppressors and destroyers, and they never stopped fighting them for their freedom, which they eventually won by burning down the cities of their oppressors.

over time, the celts were assimilated nearly entirely and the germans slowly adopted aspects of christianity, but to suggest that christianity was the basis of the culture is backwards. the legal systems in these countries, especially in england, are fundamentally germanic, and then borrowed aspects from roman christianity, rather than the other way around. our religious traditions are fundamentally germanic, even if they have a christian gloss over them. our cultural traditions are individualistic and libertarian, not hegemonic or hierarchical. and, we've struggled from the start to see the logic in treating women as inferior livestock. we are not christians, we are barbarians.

when the dust of the last viking attempts to destroy christianity settles, what is left is a feudal society dominated by warlords that use christianity as a tool to manipulate their conquered peoples. in the end, the barbarian overlords found christianity too useful to dismantle altogether. but, it was never a driving force for any meaningful decision made by anybody. and, the scribes were still reading their latin texts, insofar as they could find them.

so, people ask the question of when it was that christianity began to unravel in the northwest. was it recently, as per nietzsche? was it in the age of enlightenment? the renaissance? the reformation? the black death? while these all mark turning points of victory in the struggle against the church, i might argue that the question is illusory: these areas were never fully romanized, never fully christianized, but have rather spent the entirety of history fighting hard to maintain their identity in strict and brutal opposition to the dominance of the encroaching church.

that is our history, as northern europeans: we are not products of christianity, but victims of it.

the truth is that most people are going to think that these are actually really very moderate, sensible positions that are hard to disagree with in any substantive way. these are not hard-right positions, they're centrist positions, and large swaths of ndp and liberal voters are going to agree with them, outright. the media's framing of this has really never been coherent. immigration control isn't and has never been a strictly right-wing concern.

no sensible person is going to think it's unreasonable to build a fence on a border, and screening criteria for immigration is really a matter of public policy, as a reflection of the popular will. there's nothing outside of the mainstream, here.

the line has to be drawn somewhere around the use of due process. it's when you start talking about restricting or eliminating rights to hearings - which trump has done - that it enters the realm of right-wing politics. it's when you start restricting rights, and mistreating people. that's not the messaging i'm getting from him.

but, i'm still in favour of supply management, amongst other things i would disagree with this party about, which are all far more more pressing ballot issues to me.

https://nationalpost.com/news/build-a-fence-maxime-bernier-announces-plan-by-peoples-party-to-crack-down-on-immigration